I was once a fan, a huge fan of Western Digital’s My Book line of external hard drives. I wrote about them in my books. I’ve praised them on this blog. Never again.
Last week my Mac’s external backup drive died. It had over 2 years of Time Capsule backups. Gone it was, in an instant. That’s the way hard drives die sometimes: A series of Time Capsule errors, then the drive was gone, gone, gone.
I bought a replacement drive, a Western Digital My Book external, a 1.5TB drive to replace the 1TB drive that died. I also bought three more WD external drives for other computers in my office, also to be used as backup drives.
After installing the first WD My Book, I noticed something annoying on the screen. It was a phantom CD-ROM drive.
There was nothing about the phantom CD-ROM drive in the external drive’s documentation or packaging. There was no file folder on the hard drive either.
No, it turns out that Western Digital puts the phantom CD-ROM drive software on the external drive’s firmware, i.e., on the ROM chips that control the drive’s hardware. And they provide no method for you to disable that software.
I tried dragging the phantom CD-ROM drive to the Trash on the Mac, which should eject the drive. No dice: The drive came back. Again and again, like an unwanted cat.
The offensive software WD uses is called WD smartdrive. You should Google that sometime. You’ll find forum after forum of users complaining angrily.
To rid my external hard drive of the software, I had to download a firmware upgrade. Then I had to download a patch that merely turned off the offensive software. You see, you can’t really get rid of it. You can’t even low-level format the drive, because the software is hardcoded in ROM, not on the drive itself.
The process to remove WD smartdrive occupied an hour of my time,but remember that I bought four of the drives. So I returned three of them back to the store.
I also fired off an angry letter at Western Digital, announcing that there was no way I would ever write about their products in my books again.
When I want external storage, I want external storage. I don’t want a program I cannot remove or disable.
I’ll let you know whether Western Digital responds to my angry letter. My guess is that, given their arrogance with the damn WD smartdrive software in the first place, the won’t bother. We’ll see.
Thanks for the heads up Dan. So is there any other external hard drive brand you would recommend?
Comment by sriksrid — March 22, 2010 @ 8:50 am
I returned the WD drives and obtained some Hewlett-Packard backup drives instead. They’re working great so far. While they do come with backup and other tools, that software is held in a folder on the drive, not in the firmware. It’s very easy to avoid using the software, or delete it altogether.
Comment by admin — March 22, 2010 @ 8:57 am
thanks for the warning, I was considering buying one
Comment by gamerguy473 — March 23, 2010 @ 5:38 pm
But after a friend’s experience with HP I wouldn’t buy one of those either
Comment by gamerguy473 — March 23, 2010 @ 5:38 pm
What, pray tell, happened with your friend and HP?
Comment by admin — March 23, 2010 @ 5:41 pm
It’s a really long story, but I’ll give you the jist of it. A couple of years ago, my friend got a brand spankin’ new HP laptop. It did what he wanted, and he got it at a decent price. He took really good care of it (physically and as far as security goes.) And one day after having it for only several months he needed to do a project for school that was due the next day. So he opened it up and pressed the power button. Nothing happened, all you got was the sound of the whirring fans. No response from the monitor, the CD drive, and the hard disk drive, or the keyboard. Not even the BIOS menu came up. And the HP customer service wasn’t much of a help either. His laptop was totaled. And even though he later found out that that particular model had been recalled they still wouldn’t fix it unless he paid some ungodly amount that escapes me now. After some more research I learned that HP is to the computer industry as scalpers are the the sporting industry. Meaning that they buy cheap crappy parts and sell it for a much higher price because they can because they’re HP. Okay, I got it out, now I’ll get off the soap box.
Comment by gamerguy473 — March 24, 2010 @ 12:04 pm
I still buy (and prefer) HP printers. They did one of the original laser printers, the LaserJet. I’ve not bought their systems, though. HP doesn’t make computers, they buy other outfits that make the computers. They consume those companies, such as Compaq or Packard Bell. That’s sad, but people still buy them because HP has a good reputation for scientific equipment, calculators, and printers.
Comment by admin — March 24, 2010 @ 1:01 pm
I was looking at a WD portable hard drive that was on a sale at Target here, but now I’ve read about this, I think I might pass on it, even though it’s red and shiny.
Comment by Douglas — March 26, 2010 @ 1:10 am